Chicken

After falling in love with all things "chicken", several years ago, I made a sketch of one. I stumbled across it in some paperwork recently, and remembered what was going through my head.

I wanted to capture that unique personality which only belongs to chickens, so my pencil-strokes were deliberately unrefined - scratchy like a chicken, lol.

I didn't mind that it looked scribly, in fact, I wanted to duplicate that look with another medium. I thought ink & some kind of wash, would work best. Upon checking my supplies I discovered some black ink and watercolour paints.

I would draw the ink in first, then apply watercolour over the top. For this, I used a medium tapered brush.

Notice the paper buckling? I'll come back to that point, but overall, it wasn't what I was attempting to capture. The brushstrokes seemed too chunky and awkward on the page. But it was worth another try...

This time I used a smaller brush and lessened the intensity of the ink details. It seemed to help, but it still looked like a cartoon. At this point, I went online to look for some tips, and found a great video on "line & wash".

It runs for just over thirty-minutes, but is filled with a lot of incredible pointers on how to use watercolour and draw freestyle lines. The finished landscape looks gorgeous at the end too.

Well that video certainly cleared up some important details. First, I discovered I was using watercolour paints on dry paper. I only had sketch paper, that buckles with moisture - so watercolour wasn't going to work.

But I had the next best thing! Watercolour pencils. These can be used dry, in a sketch book, with a little water afterwards to blend. For the freestyle ink, I also had to ditch the brush, and use a black (waterproof) pen.


So, third time's the charm...

I was much happier with the result, as it was more in-line with the original concept.

What I learned is, sketch pads are great for experimentation, but very limited in what mediums they will work with. Anything involving moisture (except watercolour pencils) can't really be used.

I also learned I still like chickens!